I’m flattered when they ask me for advice regarding playing the guitar for the first time. Also a bit puzzled since I’m neither a parent nor a music teacher.
However, I always recommend the ukulele to adults and children alike since it’s physically easier to play than a guitar (smaller and with only 4 nylon strings), chords are far simplified (C major uses one finger) and strummed openly it still sounds pleasant (not so a standard tuned guitar).
Regarding the guitar, as a teenager who thought he’d left music learning too late, this is how I learnt to play. A while ago I listened to every album by The Cure at the excellent Temporary Fandoms page* and I realised this was my guitar education. Back in the mid 1980s I borrowed a school mate's classical guitar and every evening I’d play along to the music I was into at the time. The Jam, Julian Cope,The Doors, but mostly The Cure. I remember their 1985 album ‘The Head on the Door’ being released and me trying to learn the various parts for guitar and also bass (the bass guitar would soon become my main instrument).
(Robert Smith of The Cure)
It probably helped that I would learn songs by ear. I’d buy the occasional songbook but you’d be surprised how many mistakes those things have, and anyway the transcribers were only doing what I did, working it all out by ear. Plus of course there was no internet, so no chords worked out for you or YouTube tutorials to crib from either, ah them were the days (gazes off wistfully...)
So bottom line, play that guitar. Or sell/give it away. They need to be played!
* Temporary Fandoms is a Facebook page that goes through entire artist discographies, one album a day, with good discussions from the listeners.
